Yes, we plan our vacations by looking at our stats on geocaching.com. This trip was really planned (besides breaking in the new MINI) because we were both going a bit stir crazy. Since we stayed home for M.L. King Day it was decided that we needed to get away (or Cecil would be coming at us yelling “Heeerrrreee’sss Johnny!”) The nearest state that had not been colored in on the map- Iowa. It seems we have already cached in the warm states within a long weekend’s drive so we headed north.
What do you do when you get a new car? Go on a trip, of course. Sue didn’t let me anywhere behind the wheel for a least one tank of gas… I don’t think she trusts me after what happened to her Honda Del Sol- even though the insurance company agreed it was NOT my fault. That said we did have a trip on the books (the concept of a trip, just needed an excuse) “Poppy,” Sue’s new MINI, just gave us the excuse. Where did we go? If you follow me on Twitter you got tweets with every geocache Cecil logged along the way. If you don’t… stay tuned. We will be announcing that before Apple tells us anything about the iPad2 on Wednesday.
Before you start getting any bad ideas, I do love my family.
This is based on a true story and I am sure that anyone who has been caching long enough has a similar tale to tell. There is a cache near my parent’s house (it has been disabled as of this post) and I decided to share with my father my interest in geocaching. We walk down to the cache and (ignoring the GPS) head off in the wrong direction (like that hasn’t happened to you- the cache was about a cave so we headed to the cave- duh!) and start a simple search. A family arrives (it is a very scenic place) and while Sue and I go silent and start making sure we don’t look like we are searching my father announces to the family that we are geocaching and we are looking for a hidden box that has been placed in the area and on, and on, and on. I quietly walk away and find the cache as he is still chattering away with the family about the resort being built and other things. Those who have met my dad can picture this, he’s a very friendly guy… which doesn’t work too well when he’s trying to be the center of attention and you are trying to blend in.
Well as Cecil got his 600th find yesterday I thought I had everything planned out to make the run… except for logging when I was half awake and needing to comeback a relog a few this morning! We started in Greenwich and I had a pad with my countdown on it so that the virtual cache at the Prime Meridian would be #600. This was the plan and it was a pretty good one. I know that I can be forgetful at times and can even be called “random” so I was trying to make sure that everything worked out. That was until I back to hotel and started to log the caches. I pulled up the map and just started logging from the caches on the map… not my carefully orchestrated list. I suddenly came up with an extra cache! so I tweaked my logging order so it worked out and tried to get some sleep. Well, Sue comes along this morning (being all concrete/sequential) and reminds me that we skipped one of the Greenwich gate caches that I had logged! SO I go back and fortunately only need to delete a couple entries. I am not changing the map for the tracking coin… I’m an old Boy Scout, but its trail is close enough. My plan worked perfectly- I just didn’t. Cecil did get his 600th at the Prime Meridian and I bought a baseball cap to celebrate. As Cecil would say “ook!”
Cecil celebrates his 600th find at Greenwich after a lovely morning wandering the park and the town to get the numbers right.
Since this is supposed to be somewhat autobiographical, I thought a quick comic about geocaching would be interesting. While exaggerating slightly this is kind of based on fact… Sue lures me out to a really cool place under the guise of taking photos when really it is all about finding a geocache. I do get some nice pictures, but sometimes there does seem to be an urgency to the entire trip. So in honor of all those cachers out there who have a spouse or friend who is just that step ahead of them in their love of caching… here you go. Also congratulations to Sue for being first to find (therefore first to meet the requirements) on the Indiana Epic Virtual Challenge (GC1ND58) which concluded with a lovely stroll to find the last cache (GC776E) on Saturday morning.
